Research and Rural Development Work Sessions

Research and Rural Development Work Sessions

Dzanga Sangha Dense Forest Reserve

Central African Republic

July 31-August 2, 1997

Financed by: World Wide Fund for Nature, Grant AC51, and

Biodiversity Support Program-WWF-US Africa Program Special Grant

Available through: Yale University Council on International and Area Studies/Sangha River Network (http://www.yale.edu/sangha)

Synthesis report (English)

Rebecca HARDIN

Yale University

Department of Anthropology

51 Hillhouse Avenue

New Haven, CT 06511

Tel: 203 865 7611

Fax: 203 432 3669

E-mail:

Dr. Melissa REMIS

Purdue University

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

1365 E. Winthrop Stone Hall

West Lafayette, IN 47907-1365

Tel: 765 496 1514

Fax: 765 496 1476

E-mail:

This report presents results from a series of work sessions held in Bayanga, southwestern Central African Republic C.A.R. during the last days of July, 1997. Our analysis of preliminary data, and the dynamics of information exchange initiated during these meetings testify to the feasibility of the original idea. But none of our ideas could have been implemented without the support of the World-Wide Fund for Nature-U.S. and the government of the C.A.R., longtime partners in the management of the Dzanga Sangha and Dzanga Ndoki protected areas. They were indispensable from start to finish and we praise their willingness to better define “participation” by actors at various levels of the intertwined research, conservation and development process.

We would also like to thank the personnel of Doli Lodge, who so quickly transformed their tourism operation into a conference center for our visitors. They encountered many obstacles, but remained flexible, despite our much higher levels of attendance than originally anticipated! Our collaboration with them constitutes an interesting example concerning the compatibility of tourism infrastructures and staffs with the needs of an international scientific research community in integrated conservation projects.

Remarkable, really: the Dzanga Reserve management was willing to submit their efforts in three separate but interconnected domains (research, tourism and conservation) to a sort of experimental collective scrutiny. This was not a consultant’s evaluation; not one expert’s assessment, reflected in a report that might either be read or languish in project archives or government offices. On the contrary, it was an analysis carried out by representatives from layered local communities, field researchers from several different projects and countries, and local, regional and national level C.A.R. government officials. All were invited to speak frankly and to learn, through investigating the ten-year old experiment of integrated conservation management at Dzanga Sangha.

We see here the results, rooted in a specific region (but one that can be understood as a “pilot” case for other transnational conservation zones, confronted with comparable problems). The recommendations, toward the end of our text, are the distilled product of multiple questions and themes raised during the sessions. Proposed by all of us through several hours of work in focus groups, we hope they constitute a point of departure

toward improved integration—whether of social and natural science research, conservation and development, or long term regional residents and more recent arrivalsÉ

In fact, our overarching session goals were dual:

• Contextualize and analyze the roles of scientific research as a process of rural development in protected areas of the trinational Sangha region (C.A.R., Cameroon and Congo), and

• Establish the core of a broadly regionally based network for African researchers, be they based in a university, a local community or a project, for further collaboration on connected aspects of tropical forest management. This network, we hope, will develop in tandem with—indeed within the international Sangha River Network for researchers, based at Yale University and the ERMES-ORSTOM lab at University of Orléans, in France.

Indeed, the 50 participants who attended the work sessions did hail from a wide variety of different academic, political and professional categories, in roughly equal proportions (for a photo of participants, see inset).

One last word about this work: it is a synthesis of the original proceedings (in French) and does not contain the detail that such complex questions necessarily entail. What emerges from that original, longer document is a fascinating diversity of perspectives on what we call “scientific research.” In the presentations by Bayanga community members, for instance, we find their frustration at the lack of access to scientific results from studies conducted locally. This frustration, however, is mixed with a kind of optimism about what scientific research can contribute to solving complicated local development dilemmas. In the interventions from local researchers we are confronted immediately by their intimate understandings of the forest, and by their talent for dissemination of knowledge in local languages and idioms that make such knowledge more accessible and valuable to other regional residents.

Such combinations of natural science and communicative competence ought not to be under-valued by a country--indeed an international community--concerned with educating future generations of specialists and managers for this natural patrimony (be it local, national and/or global). Nor should such skills be neglected in a socially complex community like Bayanga where much of the population claims so strongly their desire—their right—to earn and learn from those who come to work in these unique ecosystems.

But these locally based researchers, from disparate educational and ethnic backgrounds, also showed pride in their ability to assimilate formal scientific methods and to carry out scientific work in increasingly independent and original ways. In this sense, they constitute the fragile bridge between international and local communities of knowledge about these ecological and social systems. And, in this sense, we like to think we facilitated for them a formative professional encounter with representatives from broader regional and international research structures, who shared their data and methods.

The resulting discussions indicate modes of analysis born through fieldwork in these equatorial African forests. Techniques for visual identification of individual animals of certain species, for instance, had Paul Elkan of University of Minnesota in animated conversation with BaAka (Pygmy) trackers. Techniques for teamwork in social science were presented by the health team working in Bayanga, and were interrogated with interest by medical anthropologist Joseph Baluiguini from the University of Bangui. Such hybrid methods—part formal science, part field experience, seemed deliberately, yet discreetly, to traverse political and disciplinary boundaries in their efforts to describe and analyze complex forest phenomena.

Indeed, it seemed clear that further communication and collaboration are imperative. At the end of the work sessions, the representatives of broader national and regional research programs left with a new view of and from “the field.” Researchers scattered throughout the Dzanga-Sangha, Ndoki and Lobéké forests, on the other hand, left with a better understanding of how the minutia of their daily routines contributes to larger agendas and to policy issues.

And those who already were, and will remain in the village of Bayanga? The Bayangans who participated directly in the work sessions were indulgent of our new and somewhat incendiary ideas. They were generous with their time and energy despite our limited budget. Many other Bayangans participated in this pilot phase of research-related networking, if only by welcoming us as researchers once again into their lives and neighborhoods, with their habitual generosity and understanding. We are grateful to you, Bayangans, and we dedicate this work to you. We hope this document, in its French and Sango incarnations, will circulate. We hope it provokes further impassioned debate and innovative discussion beneath the mpandjos and the church roofs of your village. For it is within such spaces (let’s be honest) that we perceive the emergence of real popular will for the success or failure of strategies for environmental conservation and economic development. What we have to offer you is a case study; perhaps it is also a step toward action for better exchange of knowledge across countries, cultures, and social groups who will have, together, to manage these forests in the future.

RH and MR, May 1998

These work sessions brought together members of biological and social science research teams working in the forested regions of southwestern Central African Republic (and adjacent protected areas in Cameroon and Congo) to analyze the economic and educational roles of research in protected areas. The teams planned future progress toward integration of natural and social science research in community-based conservation and development goals, contributing to creation of a core network of central African and international researchers. That network has expanded during a broader meeting of representatives from several central African countries at Yale University in September, 1998. Using the Dzanga Sangha Reserve as a case study in the context of the wider Sangha region, indigenous experts, community research agents, university-trained scholars, non-governmental and ministry representatives worked toward the following objectives during the Research and Rural Development sessions(July 31-August 2, 1998):

• Analyze perceptions of research projects by various residents of the protected area, and make recommendations for improved communication between researchers and the communities within which they work

• Describe actual and potential forms of educational exchange occurring within research teams, and between research teams and local communities

• Describe research as economic development, tracing trends in wages, health benefits, skill acquisition and comparing such trends to other forms of employment available in forest conservation zones

• Compare field methods, community interaction and policy implications of biological and social science projects respectively; make recommendations for their integration within broader conservation and development efforts

• Delineate current structures and patterns for sharing data and methods across projects and between national and international researchers within the region; review the efficacy of such structures and patterns, and recommend reinforcement or modification of current practice where necessary

• Create a substantively and logistically specific proposal for a broader conference of equatorial Africa region researchers, to be held in 1998

BACKGROUND AND BROADER RELEVANCE:

The Central African Republic (C.A.R.), like many other species-rich habitat countries, currently has an ambitious conservation-management program but little infrastructure to support the spectrum of social and biological biodiversity science necessary for appropriate management. It is essential that those Central Africans who will carry out conservation and economic development programs and direct biodiversity policies have the tools necessary for assessing and analyzing biological diversity and human-wildlife interactions (e.g. Saterson, 1990; Cracraft, 1995).

To date, most biodiversity assessment and research on wildlife in the C.A.R. has been carried out by expatriate rather than national scientists. This does not further C.A.R.’s goal of carrying out their conservation and wildlife management programs independently. Further, the abilities of expatriate scientists to provide the expertise for current research, development and conservation projects are limited by competing commitments to their home academic institutions. Research and educational institutions within equatorial Africa have been challenged by tumultuous political and economic transitions in recent years, and in the C.A.R. the school system closed altogether for two years since 1988. As a result of such complex circumstances in many African contexts, contributions of expatriate researchers to fledgling local research communities may foster dependency, rather than independence (Diawara, 1997).

On the other hand, even during times of political and civil crisis when expatriate development or foreign service professionals have been elected to leave or been evacuated from C.A.R., ongoing research projects have maintained operations in rural areas. Particularly in border regions such as the upper Sangha River, easy access among research sites in different countries creates the possibility for continued data collection and development of African research capacities over time. Such contributions merit monitoring and reinforcement, given upheaval in urban areas across the equatorial African forests at present.

Further, the research process may provide development of human resources and economic systems without entailing uncontrolled growth of population centers, and attendant ecological and political dilemmas associated with urbanization and migration. Enhancement of scientific capacity and knowledge of host country researchers can thus promote use of natural resources to benefit a range of national and regional communities while providing a sustainable foundation for growth in the private sector (Rudran, 1990).

The sessions detailed below thus began to assess progress made by research teams working independently, and constituted the first steps in a process of strengthening and integrating research practices as tools for regional and national development in the C.A.R. and neighboring countries. Structured around central questions, presentations were limited to 30 minutes so that informal discussion and questions/answers may follow. Translation between French and Sango was provided by the bilingual staff of the Dzanga Sangha Reserve’s Conservation and Tourism programs, notably Reserve Guard Abel Mbalanga and Reserve Guide Gilbert Assomo.

REFERENCES CITED:

Cracraft, J. 1995. The Urgency of Building Global Capacity for Biodiversity Science. Biodiversity and Conservation 4: 463-475.

Diawara, Mamadou. 1997. You know everything. Why do you ask us? Paper presented for the “Words and Voices: Critical Studies in African Oral Historiography” Conference at Ann Arbor, Michigan 20th-23rd March.

Rudran, A, Wemmer, C.M. Singh, M. 1990. Teaching Applied Ecology to National of Developing Countries. In: Race to Save the Tropics, Goodland, R. ed. Island Press, Wash. D.C. pp. 125-140

Saterson, K. 1990. Integration of Biological Conservation with Development Policy: The Role of Ecological Analysis, in, Race to Save the Tropics, Goodland, R. ed. Island Press, Wash. D.C. pp. 1141-159.

BASIC WORK PROGRAM

Thursday July 31- Reserve Dzanga Sangha (RDS)Case Studies

ú Welcome Coffee bar and Introductions 8:00-9:00

Opening Comments

TOUAZOUMBONA, Préfet of the Sangha Mbaéré

SESSION I. Case Study, Dzanga-Sangha Reserve (RDS), CAR

I.1 Community Perspectives 9:00-11:00

What sorts of misconceptions exist among community members about the practice of research? What sorts of negative research practices foster such misconceptions? What are recognized research benefits to local communities? Who receives such benefits? How can educators, officials and extension workers better support and be supported by research practitioners?

Presenters:

1. NDINGA, President of the Special Delegation of Yobé Sangha

2. YANGUILIMO, Secretary for Committee of Development in Bayanga

3. YANKOSSE, Chief of the Gendarmerie

4. MBAYA, School Director of Bayanga

5. SAMBO, Community Schooling (BaAka)